Family Album

Across the silvered pages
our shadows come
those small children
holding comicbooks & violets

grinning into the hard light
hand in hand as in the old story
At night, all night, they wander
brother & sister along the trail of rock

& crumbs, scattering some message
like the flight of wild doves:
gone. The air is bright
with absence. We were so young.

Leaning across the book
you tell me it is nothing
silver on paper
tears in wine.

(never published, as old as my daughter. It was written the year she was born, and the year my brother was released from prison. )